


Unlucky... Right?

by Origamidragons



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Animal Transformation, Cat Nico, M/M, Transformation, Worried Will, solangelo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 09:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6149197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Origamidragons/pseuds/Origamidragons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Nico is turned into a cat, Lou Ellen decides Will should be his catsitter, Will is oblivious, and the Aphrodite cabin places bets. Solangelo cuteness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Nico was fine with the Hecate cabin having defenses. In fact, he expected that all the cabins would have some way to protect themselves, especially considering the ridiculous amount of attacks that took place on a daily basis.

But turning someone into a cat just for ringing your doorbell seemed a bit excessive.

He twisted around, trying to catch a glimpse of his new body, and saw a black tail flick out of sight. He groaned to himself, and it came out as a guttural hiss. Not only was he a cat, he was a black cat. Didn't he have enough bad luck?

He had told Lou Ellen when he was going to show up. He expected she would at least disable the transformation magic when she had someone coming over, especially when she was the one that needed his help.

The door, carved with magic runes, clicked open. Someone was answering the doorbell, no doubt. Light shone out, burning his sensitive eyes. Well, at least that hadn't changed. Lou Ellen scooped him up and examined him with a critical eye. "Well, what have we here?"

He hissed and scratched at her arms, unhappy with the sudden physical contact as well as her apparent forgetfulness towards the fact that he had promised to come over to answer some questions about 'death magic,' as she had put it. She almost dropped him, but he dug his claws into her shirt. He did not want to fall. The floor was suddenly way further away than it had been.

She sighed. "Darn it," and then yelled over her shoulder, "Kayla! Did you curse the doorbell again?"

Another girl appeared at her shoulder. "Yeah, why? I was just practicing- oh," she stopped abruptly at the sight of the pure black cat in her councilor's arms, staring balefully at her with bright green eyes.

"Um," she said uncertainly. "Um, I didn't think anyone was coming by... Um, who is it?"

Lou Ellen hefted Nico in her arms, prompting him to frantically scrabble for purchase again. "I'm not sure, but I think it's Nico di Angelo."

Nico tried to nod.

"Oh, great!" she said. "I know just who should take care of you while we work on getting you back to normal."

Nico attempted a protest (No! Not great! Not great at all!) but could only manage a chain of unhappy meows. Lou Ellen had apparently made up her mind and was already halfway across the common area in the middle of the ring of mismatched cabins.

Nico squirmed in her arms, but she had apparently grown used to his protests, because her arms were clamped tighter around him than before. She was heading straight towards a cabin that glowed golden like a second sun, even at night, and burned his eyes. Cabin Seven. He got a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach and thought he suddenly knew where Lou Ellen was heading with this.

He hissed in protest, but she pretended not to hear him. She knocked on the door once, then barged in without waiting for anyone to let her in. "Will?" she called, probably waking up half the cabin. A chorus of sleepy complaints rose from the bunks. She made a beeline to a particular bunk and shook its occupant awake.

Will woke up, eyes soft and hair ruffled with sleep. Nico's narrowed green eyes darted around the (thankfully darker) interior of the cabin, trying to look at anything besides Will Solace and his... um... shirtlessness. He found a very interesting spot on the floor, and he thought he felt Lou Ellen's chest shaking with laughter. Nico silently swore revenge on her as soon as he got back to normal.

"Lou Ellen? That you? Wassup?" he asked, words slurred together with sleep. Before Nico could object to the plan that the daughter of Hecate had formulated, he was shoved against Will's chest. He noticed it was warm... really, really warm. Then he hated himself for noticing that.

"Can you take care of this cat for a couple days?"

Will blinked a couple times, clearly still half-asleep, as he processed her request, the gears in his brain clogged with exhaustion. "Um, I guess. Where did you even get a cat? We're not allowed to have normal pets."

"Great! Thank you! You only have to watch him for about two days, okay? Thanks again!" Lou Ellen thanked him, completely ignoring his follow-up question. Before the Apollo boy could press her for an answer, she had disappeared out the door again. Will sighed in exhaustion and some confusion, got back into bed, and set Nico on his chest.

The son of Hades turned unlucky cat curled up under the covers by instinct, only to be jolted out of a sleepy haze when the boy he was curled up on yawned and shifted, causing what felt like a miniature earthquake to the undersized cat.

After a short moment of absolute terror, Nico relaxed and fell back asleep. Will sleepily petted him as he drifted off, and that helped. His traitorous cat self purred steadily as the warm fingers massaged his ears. Not that he would ever admit it, but it felt really, really nice.

As he fell asleep, he thought that maybe (just maybe) this wouldn't be so bad.


	2. Chapter 2

The first though through Nico di Angelo's head when he woke up was: 'It sure is bright in here.'

The children of Hades were notorious for not being morning people, and the obsidian walls of his cabin, unbroken by any windows, tended to absorb light. Even if he woke up at noon, it would still be dark inside the miniature fortress. The Apollo cabin, on the other hand, had big, wide open windows flooding the small building with sunlight, and all of the furnishings seemed to glitter gold under the direct light.

It hurt Nico's eyes.

His second though, following closely on the heels of the first, was: 'Why am I in the Apollo cabin?'

A cascade of embarrassing and/or frightening (to Nico, they were often synonymous) scenarios flooded his head. He backed up and promptly tumbled off of Will's bed.

Oh gods. He was on Will's bed. Or he was, formerly.

He twisted in midair, obeying some strange instincts, and managed to land on his feet.

Right, and he was also still a cat. Can't forget that.

One of Will's siblings shook the councilor awake. "Hey, man, wake up. You'll miss breakfast." A few mumbled protests and clumsy attempts to duck back under the covers later, the Apollo cabin was getting ready for the first meal of the day.

"What's up, Will?" an Apollo girl asked. "Usually you're up with the sun."

A snicker rolled through the cabin. Nico rolled his eyes and idly wondered how that even looked on a cat.

Will brought a hand to his mouth to stifle a yawn. "Mm. Lou Ellen barged in last night and asked if I could watch her cat." He glanced around for a moment, blue eyes darting around the room, until he spotted Nico, half-hiding under the bed. "There he is."

He reached down and scooped the demigod-turned-cat up before he could retreat all the way under the bed and scratched behind his ears.

It felt really nice. Not that Nico was going to admit that.

"You do realize if it came from her, there's no way it's a normal cat," the boy who had shaken Will awake commented.

Will shrugged, which made the unhappy cat cradled in his arms feel like he had just shot up on a very short, very fast elevator. It left Nico feeling slightly nauseous. "I know," the son of Apollo admitted, "but it was the middle of the night and I just wanted to get her out. Besides, I only have to watch it for a couple days. Now, breakfast!"

A cheer went up from the Apollo cabin as Will Solace lead them to breakfast, and Nico was slightly annoyed and amused by the endless optimism that seemed to flow from the Cabin Seven campers like water. He settled on being annoyed.

At breakfast, the wind nymphs brought him a bowl of cat food. As though he wasn't already sufficiently humiliated. Glaring at the stuff, he didn't notice when Percy took a seat across from Will. "Hey, Solace, have you seen Nico today?"

The black cat's ears pricked up. 'Me! Hello, that's me!' he tried to meow, succeeding in drawing Percy's attention but not much else.

"Nope, not since yesterday. He misses breakfast a lot, though. It's not healthy, but that could be why he's not here."

'Oh, since when did you get to dictate my diet?'

"Will, when did you get a cat?" the son of Poseidon asked, taking note of the complaining feline for the first time.

'I'm not a cat!' Nico protested, despite all of the evidence pointing to the opposite.

"Last night. Lou Ellen asked me to watch him," Will answered through a healthy mouthful of bacon.

Percy stared at the cat a moment longer, like he was trying to place him, then shrugged. "Well, let me know if you see him."

Will nodded, his mouth full. Nico groaned. They had both just seen him, of course. The only problem being that they didn't know it was him, and he couldn't tell them.

~o~

Will really wasn't sure what to make of Lou Ellen's cat. Instead of the bouncy personality he would except from a pet of the optimistic and hyper magician, the cat seemed positively frustrated, torn between shyness and anger.

He couldn't help but think it reminded him of someone.

After he finished his own breakfast, he scooped up the cat (it hadn't touched its cat food, and he was certain it rolled its eyes when he tried to get it to do do) and set off for the infirmary. By the time he got there, a line of injured demigod's started forming up outside the door.

A hysterical Aphrodite girl with a broken nail, an Ares kid with an arrow in his arm who seemed more annoyed than anything, a Hermes boy who'd been cursed by the Demeter cabin when he attempted to replicate the infamous chocolate-bunnies-on-the-grass-roof prank. The day passed in a blur as Will treated camper after camper. The black cat was draped over his shoulders, seemingly half-asleep. The only break in the monotony came at lunch time, when he still couldn't see Nico anywhere.

He didn't even give it a second thought until one of his patients sneezed. "Hey, can you get the cat out of here, man? I'm allergic," the boy complained.

Will glanced out the window. It was cold outside, the New York winter already creeping into the air. "No, he's fine in here. And you're not even hurt," he scolded the camper, kicking him out of the infirmary to create free space for those actually wounded.

The cat gave him a look, one that seemed to say 'Thank you.'

It was unnerving how human it seemed to act at times, and he recalled his cabinmate's warning that any animal that was a gift from Lou Ellen probably had some secrets.

He kept thinking that Nico di Angelo was going to get rushed in after being found hurt in the woods or passed out and fading from shadow traveling too far or something else, and it kept his stomach in a nervous knot all that. Every time a new patient walked in, he was both relieved because it wasn't the missing son of Hades and worried because he still didn't know where Nico was.

During a rare lull, he all but collapsed into a plastic chair and set the cat in his lap. "It's crazy in here, huh?" he asked no one in particular. The cat meowed in what he chose to believe was agreement, and he petted it lightly on the head.

"I'm worried about my friend," he admitted in a rush, needing to get his worried off of his chest where they had been slowly strangling him since Percy pointed out Nico's absence at breakfast. The cat's ears pricked up in interest, which he chose to take as a sign that he could go on.

"Nico, he's a son of Hades? He was missing this morning at breakfast and I haven't seen him since then. And I worry about him, you know? He's, well, he's my friend. And he's a little, um, self-destructive. So whenever he disappears I worry he's done something dumb and he's hurt and I'm not there to help him," he finished, the tangled knot of emotion loosening in his chest ever so slightly. There were, of course, quite a few things he hadn't mentioned, but those were things he couldn't admit to anyone. Even a cat.

The black cat was giving him a curious look, somewhere between annoyance and amusement.


	3. Chapter 3

By the next day, Will and Nico had fallen into an easy rhythm. True to his siblings' words, Will rose with the sun and brought the still-half-asleep cat to breakfast, where it stubbornly refused to eat it's cat food. Eventually, not wanting the little feline to starve, Will started passing it bacon off of his plate, which the cat was happy to gulp down.

After breakfast, Will went to work at the infirmary, with the cat slung over his shoulders or dozing on a waiting chair. Whenever there was a break in the usual crush of injured demigods, the camp's overworked main medic would collapse next to the cat and relax.

Nico was still missing, and Will still held a knot of worried tension in his chest. The cat seemed to sense his distress and would rub against his hand or crawl into his lap now and then, which for whatever reason seemed to help.

The day passed in a blur, culminating in a game of capture the flag in the evening, after supper. The reigning champions, who would lead the teams that week, were Athena and Hermes' cabins. Will's cabin had been recruited by Athena.

As usual, Will avoided the main action, instead playing field medic to his injured teammates. Usually, he enjoyed himself immensely at capture the flag, but Chiron's request to all campers beforehand to keep an eye out for the missing Nico di Angelo had dampened his spirits and tightened the knot of stress in his chest all over again. Even the cat had seemed agitated by the announcement.

The game ended with Annabeth flying over the border, Percy controlling the water to give her a boost over the river. As she flew over the rushing water, the blue Hermes flag emblazoned with a winger sandal shimmered and was replaced by grey silk, decorated with an owl. Will's cabin mates gathered around him, congratulating him and each other on a game well-played, but his normally relaxed and enthusiastic smile was strained.

~o~

Nico was sick and tired of being a cat. He hated not being able to talk, he hated being treated like a pet, he absolutely hated cat food (thank god Will had finally given him some actual food), and he hated Will carrying him around.

Well.

He didn't hate being carried around. By Will. He was just tired of it.

The son of Apollo was still worrying about him (his human self), he could tell. The way he looked at supper when Chiron had asked that everyone keep an eye for him (and he went off on his own all the time, when did they all appoint themselves his protectors? He didn't need their help). He looked frightened. Nico had tried to catch everyone's attention in the nervous hush that followed the announcement, but of course it didn't work. Will just shushed him, to which Nico replied with a scratch on the other boy's hand.

Of course it healed ridiculously fast. Stupid Apollo kids.

After that, they were at the infirmary as Will buzzed around and Nico wondered through half-closed eyes in between catnaps (ugh) how he kept working with so much enthusiasm and energy. But he was a son of the sun god. It was in his blood.

He wasn't allowed to the game of capture the flag, something about him getting hurt in the crossfire, but at least Will had sounded genuinely apologetic, which surprised him. After all, he was talking to a cat. But that seemed to be something Will had no qualms about, talking into consideration both his confession the previous day and the slightly ridiculous and utterly one-sided conversations they had shared over the course of the day.

But it wasn't until Will stopped and sighed outside of the Apollo cabin that he really surprised Nico. Shooting a worried look at the vacant, imposing Cabin Thirteen, obsidian walls blurring against the night sky and lit by green torches, the Apollo boy leaned back against the glowing wall of his cabin and slid to the grass.

"I'm really worried," he admitted to the cat. "About Nico, I mean."

And Nico knew that he meant it, which confused the cat. After all, he understood worrying about your friends, but Will was a social butterfly. He had lots of friends. Why worry about one, one who kept avoiding him and had a tendency to go off on his own anyways? The Apollo councilor shouldn't even care about him. It would be easier for him if he didn't. Easier for both of them.

"Not just because he's my friend," Will added after what seemed like an hour of consideration, and Nico's heartbeat seemed to slow down and speed up at the same time. He wasn't sure what he was hoping Will would say. He wasn't sure what he wanted left unsaid. He was unsure of so many things that it made him dizzy, but the other demigod forged on, oblivious to Nico's presence and inner turmoil.

"I like him," Will admitted after another agonizingly frozen moment. "I mean, I really like him."

The cat seized up and felt like he forgot how to breathe for a minute or two, missing Will's next few words.

"-annoying and self-destructive and full of himself and closed off, but still. I like him. I mean, I'm pretty sure that he doesn't feel the same way- he's from a time when it was basically illegal, anyways- but now that he's missing I can't help but feel like I should've told him. Because if he's dead and I never got to tell him-" Will cut himself off with a choked sob and buried his face in his hands.

Nico could only stare. He felt both guilty and light-headed at the same time, and completely exhausted. He felt like he should do something to comfort Will, but there was nothing he could do but watch uselessly as the son of Apollo hiccupped, half-laughing at himself, and dried his tears as his swarm of half-siblings stampeded up, having finally finished their celebrations following their capture the flag victory.

Long after the children of the sun god had sunk into blissfully peaceful slumber, Nico remained awake, pacing restlessly up and down the length of Will's bed, his head buzzing and swirling with questions, emotions, and confusion.

~o~

When Nico woke up the next morning, he realized a few things all at once.

First of all, he was a human again. He had to do a double take and pinch himself a few times before he let out a sigh of relief and relaxed.

It was then that he remembered the second thing: Will liked him. He actually liked them. He was on the verge of either shouting triumphantly or crying. He wasn't sure which, and he didn't get a chance to decide, because it was then that he discovered the third thing.

He was still on Will's bed. He stumbled backwards, falling right off and thumping onto the floor. He heard the familiar bleary sounds of someone waking up above him, and actually surprised himself by wishing he was still a cat and could just hide under the bed.

But of course all this had to happen in the Apollo cabin, where there wasn't a single shadow to travel through.

He swallowed hard and pulled himself up to his feet. May as well face it.

As he watched, Will groaned, pulled himself up off of his pillow with visible effort, scrubbed sand out of his eyes with a fist, and then glanced over to his right. When he did, the sleep and worry vanished from his face.

"Nico?" he asked, staring.

The son of Hades shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah."

"You inconsiderate idiot! Where were you! I-Everyone was worried! We thought you were dead!" Will shouted, exploding all of a sudden. Nico caught his change of subject in the second to last sentence and smiled to himself.

"Yeah, I know," he mumbled to himself. "Sorry," he said louder, and all of the anger seemed to run out of the Apollo boy all at once.

"Just... where were you? And why didn't you tell anyone?"

Nico chewed his lip for a moment, debating whether to tell the whole story right then and there, but decided against it. Too complicated, and besides, Will's siblings were starting to wake up. "Long story," he said. "I'll tell you later."

Will sighed and nodded, looking both relieved and frustrated. "Fine, but can you at least warn me next time? Then I'll know where to find you when you need someone to stitch you back up."

Nico hesitated, then nodded, then nodded again with more conviction. "I will.""

"One more request," the son of Apollo added to the other boy's back as he turned towards the door. Nico paused and glanced over his shoulder and was surprised (sort of) to see a flush of red in Will's face.

"Do you want to... I don't know... meet up later? You know, so you can tell me what happened and... stuff?" Will suggested as the heat rose in his cheeks. He stumbled over his words, but Nico pretended not to notice.

Nico slowly smiled. "Yeah. I... I think I'd like that."


End file.
